"Silverpine"

WOW!!!! So beautiful Marc. 😍 The realism is incredible. I love those broken and dead trees. Forest scenes are my favorite to paint. I would hang this on on my best wall for sure!

Thanks so much Nancy! They are my favourite as well! 😊 Must be a small wall then haha! That painting is smaller than you'd imagine 😄

Great work Marc, I especially like the tree trunks and the rocks.

Very nice Job , Marc !👍🏼😎

this is so lovely, and expertly crafted. What did you do to get those faint objects in the white background? was it underpainted like with gesso? It's so delicae and subtle that it's barely noticeable, but that's part of why I love it. honestly the whole piece is stunning. cheers!

Beautiful! I love the cool greens against the more bright. Terrific trees - I can feel the bark!

Thanks Tom! Love those features too! I originally planned on doing a little cliffside but in hindsight I feel those rocks give a more natural feel to the painting.

Thanks Dirk!

Thanks a lot Jeff, that's such a nice comment! Yes, similarly to using Gesso I painted on a canvas I covered completely with a relatively thin layer (just enough for it to be dark enough) of brownish-black acrylic paint. I don't use Gesso because it just sucks up my liquid base I use for my acrylic wet on wet technique.
The faint background trees are not "pre-painted" though. After blending my background I simply put them in using a greyish green which was just slightly darker than the background itself and den proceeded to slightly blend them with a soft brush (similar to bobs background trees in "Campfire"). I did that before in my last evergreen forest and I felt it made for a really nice effect. :)

Thank you Pam! Those cool greens are kind of a happy accident. My Evergreens always come out more blue than green lately. But that worked just fine for the darker vibe I wanted to achiebe. Glad you like it!

Just beautiful . Love that it looks like the Silverpine Woods!! Great job!

Love it. I can smell the soggy fallen branches just by looking at this one.

Oh! I completely forgot that you're the person who's doing an all acrylic run (challenge run ha)! I remember a while back it seemed like (iirc from your comments long ago) you were still figuring it out, but now you're consistently nailing it! Are you using a lot of the same oil w/w techniques+brushes, or have you developed your own set of tools to do it? Thanks for sharing your work!

Thanks a lot Sandy and Nick!

@Jeff Haha yes that's me! I started with acrylics and my stubborn butt didn't want to change that. Research + experience did the rest and now I consistently feel like nailing it as well! In fact I mostly do use the same techniques that are usually used for the Bob Ross kind of style. I tend to prefer the 1 inch brush over the 2 inch though and use cheaper and thinner brushes which "eat" less paint for my base coats and backgrounds before blending with the bushy brushes Bob uses. Other than that I can only think of the very soft brushes i use to bend clouds or, as in this painting, faint background details. I use soft goat hair brushes for that. But yeah, trees, mountains, bushes, highlighting, branches etc. - all the same techniques :)
To be able to paint wet on wet at all with acrylics I use a mix special paints and mediums which are widely available though.
I was thinking about writing an article on this site about the way I paint with acrylics but wasn't sure if people were interested. Maybe I'll do that some day :)

One more thing: I rarely wash my brushes while painting at all. I mostly just wipe them on paper towel or my painting clothes if I am especially lazy. (you should see those lol).

Very. Nice, love the mood.

Thanks Nivek!